Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Karma & Rebirth

"Other helpful attitudes toward the past include gratitude and forgiveness: the ability to appreciate the good things that other people have done for you, and to forgive them for the bad." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Happiness: A Buddhist Monk Looks at Positive Psychology"

"Because interconnectedness through kamma is not very reassuring on the one hand, and very demanding on the other, it’s easy to see the appeal of a notion of Oneness benevolently designed to take care of us all in spite of our actions. And why that notion can appear to be a more compassionate teaching than interconnectedness through action, in that it provides a more comforting vision of the world and is more forgiving around the precepts. But actually, the principle of interconnectedness through our actions is the more compassionate teaching of the two — both in showing more compassion to the people to whom it’s taught and in giving them better reasons to act toward others in compassionate ways." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "We Are Not One"

"One of the major things [the Buddha] woke to was the principle of action, kamma: that our lives are shaped by our actions. Our happiness, our pains, are shaped by our actions, the intentions on which we act. Having conviction in that fact is a very strengthening thing. On the one hand, it empowers you. You see that you really can shape your life. There may be obstacles that you have to overcome, but if you stick with this path long enough — the path of skillful action — you will find good results coming. This is encouraging. It helps overcome apathy. It helps to overcome hopelessness. And it focuses your attention on the right place: that regardless of the conditions of your life, if you focus on acting skillfully, things are going to improve." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Beyond Inter-eating"

"Mundane right view focuses on kamma and rebirth, and specifically on the value of generosity on the one hand, and gratitude on the other. Most of us, when we first hear the teachings on kamma, tend to think about punishment. You hear that you’re going to suffer from the results of your past bad actions, and the first thing that comes to your mind is, “Oh my God! That thing I did in the past when I hurt that person or did this thing I know was wrong: It’s going to come back and get me!” That’s our normal first thought about the teaching on kamma. But that’s not what the Buddha emphasizes when he teaches kamma. He emphasizes the positive side of karma: The fact that we can do a lot of good with our actions. He starts with reflecting on the gratitude we owe to people who’ve helped us — because they actually chose to do it. It wasn’t that they were acting under determined forces that forced them to help us. They chose to help us. We owe them gratitude — particularly, ou...

"As [the Buddha] noted, you can’t see all the results of actions here in this lifetime. Some people say, “Everything I’ve seen in life is enough to convince me that kamma works.” Well, No, it’s not. There are plenty of people who do all kinds of horrible unskillful things, yet they’re still alive. They thrive. The Buddha has a long list of people who thrive because they kill, steal, engage in illicit sex, lie, or take intoxicants [Saṁyutta Nikāya 42:13]. They do it with the right people and they do it in the right way to please someone in power, so they actually get rewarded by society in one way or another. But as the Buddha commented, those are only the short-term consequences. You’ve got to take the long-term consequences into consideration as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Rebirth is Relevant"

"Most often we go through the world, looking not at our own actions but at what other people are doing, and then we react. We feel that our reaction is a natural response, built into the way things are: When people do outrageous things, we feel we’re bound to get angry. But as the Buddha said, whether they’re outrageous or not, your reaction is still your kamma. You have to look at it that way. So you have to ask yourself, “What kind of action would be skillful in a case like this?” It’s not the first thought that often comes to us. When you look around at the world, it’s hard to say, “It’s a wonderful world, everything’s fine, therefore I’m going to be good.” You have to realize that, okay, even though the world is a mess, and people are doing all kinds of horrible things to make it messier, still, for your own sake, you have to ask yourself, “What kind of actions can I do right now that would lead to good long-term results?” That’s what you’re responsible for, and tha...

"You want to be able to trust yourself so that you don’t do or say or think unskillful things around people who are difficult. After all, you live in a world where almost everybody is difficult one way or another. If you were to wait for the world to be happy and peaceful, with everybody behaving nicely, and only then you would meditate, or then you would be able to get your mind to settle down, you would die first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Heart Set on Goodwill"

"That’s what the teaching of karma’s all about: There are choices here. And the complexity of karma is what gives us our hope, that even though some bad things may be coming up in the mind right now, there’s also a potential for goodness in their someplace. There are the seeds that have been planted someplace. So you want to look for those." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Potentials for Good"

"To begin with, when the Buddha talks about the causes of suffering, he doesn’t trace it back to what you are. He doesn’t say you suffer because you’re basically bad, or because you’re basically good but somehow have been socially conditioned to forget your true inner goodness. He comes back instead to what you do. That right there is a radical statement, and it opens huge possibilities. It’s hard to change what you are, but you can change your actions simply through knowledge, through understanding which things you do are going to cause suffering, which states of mind lead to suffering. You can look for those and you can change them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Not What You Are, What You Do" (Meditations4)

"You hear the planes going overhead. There are people up there saying to themselves that they’ve got to stay ready for a war. That’s their way of being heedful. The Buddha’s way of being heedful, though, is to say that whether there’s war or no war, there’s always a danger in being unskillful. When that sense of danger stays alive, your sense of heedfulness will help keep you on the path and get you to a point where there is no danger." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Karma & Rebirth: A Handful of Leaves"

"We’re not making the mind still simply to have a nice restful place to be, a nice experience of ease to soothe our stressed-out nerves. That may be part of it, but it’s not the whole practice. The other part is to see clearly what’s going on, to see the potential of human action: What are we doing all the time? What are the potentials contained in this doing? Then we apply that understanding of human action to see how far we can go in stripping away the unnecessary stress and suffering that come from acting in unskillful ways. It’s important that we always keep this in mind as we meditate. Remember: We’re here to understand human action, in particular our own human actions. Otherwise we sit here hoping that we don’t have to do anything, that we can just wait for some Imax experiences to come whap us upside the head, or some nice glowing sense of oneness to come welling up inside. And sometimes things like that can come unexpectedly, but if they come without your understanding ho...

"Any moment of experience consists of three things: (1) pleasures and pains resulting from past intentions, (2) present intentions, and (3) pleasures and pains immediately resulting from present intentions. Thus the present is not totally shaped by the past. In fact, the most important element shaping your present experience of pleasure or pain is how you fashion, with your present intentions, the raw material provided by past intentions. And your present intentions can be totally free. This is how there is free will in the midst of causality. At the same time, the pattern in the way intentions lead to results allows us to learn from past mistakes. This freedom within a pattern opens the way to a path of mental training, mastered through experience, that can lead to the end of suffering. We practice generosity, virtue, and meditation to learn the power of our intentions and in particular to see what happens as our intentions grow more skillful. To fully test the power of intention...

"In examining our actions in terms of cause and effect, skillful and unskillful, we are already beginning to look at experience in line with the two sets of variables that make up the four noble truths: the origination of stress (unskillful cause), the path to the cessation of stress (skillful cause), stress (unskillful effect), and the cessation of stress (skillful effect). The way the Buddha recommended that Rāhula judge the results of his actions — both while doing them and after they are done — echoes the insight that formed the heart of his awakening: that intentions have results both in the immediate present and over time. When we look at the present moment from this perspective, we find that our experience of the present doesn’t “just happen.” Instead, it’s a product of our involvement — in terms of present intentions, the results of present intentions, and the results of past intentions — in which present intentions are the most important factor. The more we focus on that ...

"If you have any friends or family members who are sick or dying, I know of no one who would tell you to treat them in a hardhearted way. Everyone would agree that you should be as compassionate as you can. The problem is that there’s little agreement on how compassion translates into specific actions. For some people, compassion means extending life as long as possible; for others it means terminating life — through assisted suicide or euthanasia — when quality of life falls below a certain level. And neither of these two groups sees the other as compassionate at all. The first sees the second as criminal; the second sees the first as heartless and cruel. For those of us trying to negotiate the murky territory between these two extremes, there’s not much reliable guidance. Ours is a culture that doesn’t like to think about illness and death, and as a result, when faced with someone who’s sick or dying, we’re at a loss as to what to do. Some people will advise you simply to do wha...

Karma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu Karma [Sanskrit noun; Pāli kamma] is one of those words we don’t translate. Its basic meaning is simple enough — action — but because of the weight the Buddha’s teachings give to the role of action, the Sanskrit word karma packs in so many implications that the English word action can’t carry all its luggage. This is why we’ve simply airlifted the original word into our vocabulary. But when we try unpacking the connotations the word carries now that it has arrived in everyday usage, we find that most of its luggage has gotten mixed up in transit. For most people, karma functions like fate — and bad fate, at that: an inexplicable, unchangeable force coming out of our past, for which we are somehow vaguely responsible and powerless to fight. “I guess it’s just my karma,” I’ve heard people sigh when bad fortune strikes with such force that they see no alternative to resigned acceptance. The fatalism implicit in this statement is one reason why so many of ...

"So the fearlessness the Buddha teaches is not the kind of fearlessness that tries to pretend there’s nothing wrong with death or that death is not a danger. It really is. Because when you go, it’s like a trap door opening under you. And if you have good kamma, okay, there will be something to support you, to catch you. If you don’t, who knows how far you’ll fall. Instead, the Buddha’s fearlessness is the fearlessness that can see death and danger, but can see past them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fear & Uncertainty"

"Death is like being suddenly evacuated with no time to pack your bags. You find yourself swept to a new land, a new place, and all you have are your skill sets. So what skills sets have you been collecting?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pissing on Palaces" (Meditations6)

"In fact, being a Buddhist fundamentalist is one of the best things we can for the world. We straighten ourselves out in thought, word, and deed, set a good example for others, share our knowledge when we can, and stop causing suffering both for ourselves and for all other beings. This, the Buddha said, is one of the greatest gifts you can give to others, if not the greatest gift of all." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Good Fundamentals"

 "All of [the Buddha's] really basic teachings have to do with action, which is why kamma is so central to what he taught. Kamma consists of your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your views. If your views are concerned with what you are or what the world is, you’re going to be sloppy in your actions. But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference — where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that are not harmful, and you apply that principle to your daily life." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Expert's Mind"

"First, [karma] comes in the five reflections — at the end, after you’ve been thinking about aging, illness, death, and the fact that you’re going to be separated from all the things you love. Those four contemplations leave you hanging. The fifth contemplation is what brings you home. In other words, if you’re going to find happiness, it’ll have to be through your actions — because the world out there doesn’t offer much. It offers some things, but then it takes them away. If you want happiness, you’re going to have to provide it through your own actions. That thought gives rise to a sense of what’s called pasada, or confidence. There is a way out, and this is it. And how do you work with your actions? You train your mind, which is the source of your actions. That’s what we’re doing right here, right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Bases of Success"

"We live in a world where good actions are rewarded, both in this lifetime and in future ones. We ourselves are beings who will survive death — as we have already survived death many times — to enjoy the results of our actions." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging & the End of Clinging"

"There are people whose kammic background — past or present — is such that they will respond to the Dhamma teaching the path to the end of suffering and stress. Within the context of this background, the act of teaching and learning is a collaborative effort. On the one hand, the act of teaching is a type of kamma, which means that the teacher has to maintain a pure intention while teaching, to ensure that he is teaching from kind and compassionate motives. He must also keep in mind the performative nature of his words — what they do to the listener or incite the listener to do — and that they must follow the principles of right speech. On the other hand, the act of learning is also a type of kamma, in that the listener must respond sincerely to the teacher’s words in order to benefit from them. This means that the purity of the listener’s intention plays an important role as well. The Buddha cannot take his listeners to awakening simply by acting on his own. Because the act o...

"Dangers in your own mind: Ultimately, those are the ones that are really dangerous. Other people can hurt you, they can even kill you, but the results go only as far as this lifetime. But through your actions — your thoughts, your words, and your deeds — you can do yourself a lot of damage that goes beyond just this lifetime, so you need a source of safety that’s nearby." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Near to the Buddha"

"Admirable friends can’t do the work for you. As [the Buddha] says, no one can purify you; you can’t purify anybody else. You don’t go to heaven because of other people’s good actions; you don’t go to hell because of other people’s bad actions. It’s your actions that determine that. So there is that sense in which you’re separate. And of course you’re the one who chooses your friends to begin with. So in that way, the separateness of our selves comes first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Separate Self"

"[The Buddha] listed four inconceivables — topics that lay beyond the range of an ordinary person even to speculate about in a healthy way. In the words of the passage, these topics “would bring madness & vexation to anyone who conjectured about them.” They are: the Buddha-range of the Buddhas the jhāna-range of a person in jhāna the results of kamma conjecture about the cosmos. The inclusion of the first two items in the list serves notice that the Buddha was not putting himself in the position of an ordinary person speculating about these matters. There was much that he knew through direct knowledge — through mastering jhāna and becoming a Buddha — that he did not have to speculate about. Thus, although the entire list lies beyond the range of healthy speculation, it tells us that we cannot know the range of the Buddha’s own knowledge of these things. The inclusion of the third item in the list, the results of kamma, may come as a surprise, given the care with which the Budd...

"The Buddha recommends viewing the world as nothing more than the six senses — the five physical senses plus the mind — and the activities based on them. Then he has you see the six senses and their objects as old kamma, and everything you do based on them as new kamma ( SN 35:145 ). This is where the focus shifts to habits and practices. To develop dispassion for both types of kamma, he recommends observing the world so-defined as simply originating and passing away. When you focus on these things originating from moment to moment, the concept of “non-existence” with regard to the world doesn’t occur to you. When you focus on their passing away, the concept of “existence” with regard to the world doesn’t occur to you. This means that there’s nothing left to cling to in terms of the world ( SN 12:15 )." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Clinging & the End of Clinging"

"A lot of people don’t like the idea of responsibility. They’d rather have kamma-free zones in large areas of their lives where they can do what they want and not have to deal with the results, or have someone else protect them from the results. But that attitude is childish. If you wanted to live in a world where your actions had no results, that would also mean that generosity would have no meaning. Gratitude would have no meaning. Actions would just be thrown around, without any consequences — but they wouldn’t have any meaning, either. Nothing would have any meaning. It’s because we are responsible for our actions that they do have meaning." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Lessons of Good Kamma" (Meditations9)

"Conviction in the principle of karma requires that you make a commitment not to hedge your bets. You’re going to depend totally on the skillfulness of your own intentions to whatever extent you can develop that skillfulness. That’s the principle to which you have to devote yourself. As for other principles or lack of principles, let them go. Sometimes this feels a little scary. You’re so used to hedging your bets so that at least you’re popular, at least you’ve got connections, so that if the principle of karma doesn’t work out you’ve got something else to fall back on. But to be really committed to the principle of karma, to get the best results from it, you have to be committed. And to be really committed requires repeated acts of commitment. This is why in the Forest tradition so much emphasis is placed on the virtue of courage. Not foolhardiness, but courage. It takes a certain amount of courage to keep the mind centered and still, because otherwise we’re always...

Question: The precept against killing is often translated into adopting a vegetarian diet. Is this necessary? Aren’t you also killing these poor vegetables, stripping their skin off while they’re still alive and boiling them? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: For the monks, our rule is that we’re not allowed to eat meat if we either know or suspect that it was killed for the purpose of feeding us. The precept against killing is specifically against either killing something on your own or telling someone else to kill. Now, if you want to take the precept further and adopt a vegetarian diet, that’s perfectly fine. But the precept doesn’t require it. Just make sure that when you go to a seafood restaurant and they have a fish tank with live fish, don’t choose any of the live fish. As for vegetables, they don’t come under the concept of sentient being — they don’t feel pain — so the precept doesn’t cover them. We’ve received several questions on the issue of the relationship between the...

"Your actions are what are real, that have the most reality. The world out there is not the issue. The world that you experience comes from your actions. Your [intentional] actions [kamma] are more solid, more powerful than your experience of earth, wind, water, fire, and all the other elements. That’s a pretty radical statement. This is why the Buddha keeps focusing back on what you’re doing right now because what you’re doing right now is the big shaping force in your experience." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "So Little Time" (Meditations8)

"Even as the world seems to be closing in, there’s a way out. The Buddha found that way, not by sitting around and simply accepting things as they are, but by figuring out what he was doing that was giving bad results, and how he could change his actions to get better results." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe"

"One of the old questions in ethics is how to judge an action. Do you judge it by its intention or it by the result? As usual, the Buddha found a way of not falling for that dichotomy. He said to judge the action both by the intention behind it and by the result. The two are intertwined. In other words, it’s not just a question of the goodness of your heart. Simply having a good intention is not enough. It sets you in the right direction, but you’ve got to learn more than just having good well-meaning intentions. At the same time, it’s not just a question of being effective regardless of what your intentions is. You want to be skillful all around. In this way, the Buddha takes the question out of the realm of ethics and into the realm of skill. As any craftsman or craftswoman knows, a good piece of art is accomplished not just by intending to do a good piece of art or by working from a good idea. It has to be good in the execution as well. At the same time, good execution of a bad...

"So remember: Your protection lies in your goodness, in the skillfulness of your intentions and the discernment with which you carry those intentions out. Those are the things that will see you through no matter what happens. That’s why the Buddha taught them as the Dhamma, because they’ve been true all the time, as civilizations rise and fall and then rise again. These are the qualities that make human life worth living, make it the kind of life that we can get the most out of it, regardless of how things arise and fall outside." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Your Goodness Is Your Protection"

"People may have been good to you, but it’s not the case that they always will be. The human mind is very changeable, and they could change without notice. You can’t rely on their goodness as your nourishment. You’ve got to learn how to take as your nourishment whatever goodness you can give rise to in yourself. This is where goodwill [mettā] is very important. If, when you’re not wishing any harm on anybody, harm does come to you, you’re not going to feel guilty or that somehow it was a punishment for your unskillful attitude. You can just chalk it up to past kamma and leave it at that. It’s a much cleaner and more bearable way of thinking." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsentimental Goodwill"

"So, instead of promoting resigned powerlessness, the early Buddhist notion of karma focused on the liberating potential of what the mind is doing at every moment. Who you are — what you come from — is not anywhere near as important as the mind’s motives for what it’s doing right now. Even though the past may account for many of the inequalities we see in life, our measure as human beings is not the hand we’ve been dealt, for that hand can change at any moment. We take our own measure by how well we play the hand we’ve got. If you’re suffering, you try not to continue the unskillful mental habits that would keep that particular karmic feedback going. If you see that other people are suffering, and you’re in a position to help, you focus not on their karmic past but your karmic opportunity in the present: Someday you may find yourself in the same predicament they’re in now, so here’s your opportunity to act in the way you’d like them to act toward you when that day comes." ~ T...

"Some people have problems with the teaching on kamma, but what exactly is the Buddha asking you to believe in when he asks you to have conviction in kamma? First, action really is happening — it’s not an illusion. Second, you really are responsible for your actions. There’s no outside force like the stars or some good or evil being acting through you. When you’re conscious, you’re the one who decides what to do. Third, your actions have results — you’re not just writing on the water — and those results can be good or bad depending on the quality of the intention behind the act. So the teaching on kamma puts you in charge of shaping your life. It’s a good teaching to believe in. And how does this relate to discernment? It provides the basis for the questions you’re going to ask to give rise to discernment. And because the principle of kamma places a lot of emphasis on the need to act on skillful intentions to get the good results you want, the basic question becomes:...